December 22, 2011

Tis the Season...

for ugly Christmas sweaters...
 

for peppermint sticks...

for decking the halls...






and festive treats...

We picked over 50 lbs of pecans from our yard and made the yummiest pecan brittle.  We packaged it up along with the peppermint dipped oreos and gave it to friends for Christmas this year. 
With so many pecans on our hands, our friends should all be looking forward to some pecan pie, candied pecans, pecan brittle, pecan cookies, pecan crusted salmon,spiced pecans etc. from the Ben and Brit home!



for admiring the Christmas lights...


We bundled up and took the cub scouts downtown to enjoy the Christmas lights and some yummy hot chocolate.  It was a fun and festive outing for everyone. 




for getting crafty...  



After painting a few tree branches white and adding some glitter we placed them in a large vase in our living room and hung our Christmas cards for display. Now we and all our visitors get to admire the creative cards of our friends and fam.
This Christmas card takes the cake. Lee & Syd had each family take an ugly Christmas sweater picture.  The result: the inner nerdiness of the Snarr fam on display for everyone to see. Haha!

and of course...
Tis the Season for remembering our Savior's birth.
The world seems to be taking Christ out of Christmas by commercializing this Holiday.  It is easy to get caught up in all the shopping, decorating, money, parties and treats and forget CHRIST.  This year Ben and I asked ourselves this question: "What can we give for Christ this Christmas?"  We are finding simple ways to give this year but the gift we are most excited to give is to do Temple work for our ancestors. We will have a Merry Christmas knowing that the gospel of Jesus Christ is being spread and our family is united eternally. 

We hope you have a Merry Christmas too.

December 18, 2011

3 is the magic number

"ya it is."

(love that song when Ben sings it in such a high voice, imitating Blind Melon)



For our 3 year Anniversary we bought a super nice camera.  We both said that we wouldn't do anything else for each other but I had to.  I'm still trying to make up for all the outrageously wonderful gifts Ben gives me all the time.   So I decided to be sentimental and I printed off our old email messages from back in the day when we were dating.  We read a few pages together which consisted of us asking each other random questions back and forth, like "stung by a bee or ten mosquito bites?" or "if you could invent anything what would it be?"  When we reached certain points in the reading of our messages I would stop and have Ben open a gift that went along with what was just read.  I gave him a total of 3 gifts (of course):
1. bubble bath
2. The office season 7 DVDs
3. Pottery classes for the two of us in 2012!  In our messages I asked Ben the question "What is something you want to learn how to do?" and he answered "...I want to get a little better at pottery.  We should take a class in the fall?!?  I loved pottery in High School and I've always wanted to brush-up on my pottery knowledge."  Now, over 3 years later, we are actually taking a pottery class together and we both CAN'T WAIT!

Fun Night Out

We had such a fun night out with friends from my work this past weekend.  We went to the improv comedy show, "Four Day Weekend." I seriously laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. Afterwards we walked around downtown and took some fun pictures by the Christmas tree.  We ate dinner at the cajun restaurant, Razoo's, then called it a night.








December 08, 2011

New toy!


Ben and I bought ourselves an early Anniversary present.
Absolutely in love with it.


December 07, 2011

First timers

Dining out for Thanksgiving dinner was definitely a FIRST for me.
At first I was against this idea, but it turned out to be a pretty special day for the two of us.  We ate at Texas de Brazil-- of course we ate turkey and cranberry sauce but we also enjoyed filet mignon, smoked salmon, lobster bisque and much more deliciousness!

Ben and I went camping together for the FIRST time. We bought our tent a long time ago but it was just recently that we finally got around to it! We made tin foil dinners, roasted marshmallow and stayed up late into the night talking and cuddling by the fire.
I can't wait to go again.



December 02, 2011

Vacation with Dad and Mom Snarr

Lee and Syd landed in "Cowtown" a.k.a. Fort Worth and spent two fun-filled weeks with us.  We thoroughly enjoyed entertaining them and showing them our world here in Texas.  Off the plane, first stop was Rangers Ballpark... of course Ben had to show them where he has lived (literally and through the television) for the past months. Second stop: our favorite, Yucatan Taco Stand for lunch. During the next week we spent our time site-seeing, restaurant dining, antique mall shopping, Wits and Wagers playing and Ranger game watching.  We attended the BYU fireside the night before the BYU vs. TCU game, and our plans to attend the football game at Dallas Cowboy stadium were terminated due to the fact that the Rangers were playing that same night in game 7 of the World Series.  Sadly both Rangers and BYU lost.  But we had guests and there was definitely more fun to be had so we got over our sadness pretty quickly.  

The famous and delicious Tillmans barbque.


Tableside s'mores.

Syd and I attended craft night at my neighbor Dawn's together.  We screenprinted reusable grocery bags. Dawn is a graphic designer and designed and built all of the screen prints herself! She amazes me!  




Our final products!

After a week of fun in Fort Worth we were off to the coast where we hopped on the Carnival Triumph and spent 5 days traveling to Merida and Cozumel, Mexico. The cruise was a much needed time to put our feet up, eat great food, site-see and get some zzzz's.  I love and seriously miss the king size bed, the pitch black rooms and the boat softly rocking me to sleep.  As much as I enjoyed catching up on sleep, that was the least of our trip, we had such a blast and have stories to tell...




Lee won the sports trivia!

Ben played "60 seconds or less" against 5 competitors...


He passed a total of 4 missions: balancing a soda can on it's edge, stacking and taking down cups, eating a cookie off of his face and  keeping a feather in the air by blowing on it.  Ben was the last man standing and won an ego boost. I was definitley a proud wife, cheering him on loudly in the audience. We are going to have to apply to the REAL Minute to Win it! 

The first stop on the cruise was Merida, Mexico. We saw a few sites in the town and then split off from Lee and Syd.  They stayed in Merida and saw the LDS Temple, we headed off to see ancient ruins and swim in a cenote (a natural pool of clear water formed underground and often times are found in caves). 



View from the top of the ruins.










  We took a 30 minute taxi ride to the ruins and cenote and when the taxi left us there, in the middle of nowhere, I asked Ben how we would get home?  No answer. Oh well.  We were quickly distracted by the beautiful ruins and the refreshing cenote. We spoke with some other tourists and they suggested that we catch a ride on their tour bus. Great idea, but we spent too long at the ruins and as we realized it was getting late we sprinted to the parking lot.  All the buses were gone and I panicked.  Ben started talking to a man that worked on site and before I knew it Ben and I were sitting in the back of his truck, driving down the country bumpy road with the wind blowing in our faces.  He dropped us off at the nearest town where we caught a local bus.  I swear this bus was taking every child home from school because it stopped every other minute but I was just happy to be headed back towards the cruise ship.  Just as I was getting comfortable on the bus, Ben motioned me to get off, right in the middle of a highway.  We stood with our thumbs up between two busy roads, one headed back to Merida and the other back to Progresso, our cruise ship port.  I was thinking how crazy my husband is to have us hitchiking in such a place under such a time crunch. We started to realize that no one was headed in the direction we were headed so we started walking.  Finally, a couple on a motorcycle pulled up next to us and asked us if we needed a ride. Four of us on a motorcycle? Ben hesitated and I said "heck yes, we need a ride!" I wasn't going to miss my boat.  They were on the same cruise as us and rented the bike for the day (maybe we'll think of that idea next time).  So here we are, all four of us on this bike, it was quite an uncomfortable ride, especially for Ben. What an adventurous day.  


We spent halloween on the cruise ship and ate yummy festive desserts:



The cruise also stopped in Cozumel where we shopped and relaxed on the beach with Lee and Syd. 





Adam and Eve? Maybe? (This was Syds idea, clever.)



We collected a farm of animals in our room.  This cruise I took a disco class but next cruise, i'm seriously going to take the class to learn how to make these little guys. All my house guests will think i'm awesome.



We enjoyed every minute of our trip, especially since it was spent with Ben's parents.  We seriously want to start planning our next trip with them ASAP.

Along our drive home we saw the Sam Houston statue and of course we stopped at Buc-cee's for some jerky, popcorn and sparkly clean bathrooms.

"The top two reasons to stop at Buc-cee's: #1 and #2"
);